SQL Server history table - populate through SP or Trigger?

Question

In my SQL Server backend for my app, I want to create history tables for a bunch of my key tables, which will track a history of changes to the rows.

My entire appli

Answer 1

I prefer to use triggers for audit tables because triggers can capture all updates, inserts and deletes, not just the updates, inserts and deletes invoked through certain stored procedures:

CREATE TRIGGER [dbo].[tr_Employee_rev]
ON [dbo].[Employee]
AFTER UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE
AS
BEGIN
    IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM INSERTED) AND EXISTS (SELECT * FROM DELETED)
    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO [EmployeeRev](EmployeeID,Firstname,Initial,Surname,Birthdate,operation, updated, updatedby) SELECT inserted.ID, inserted.Firstname,inserted.Initial,inserted.Surname,inserted.Birthdate,'u', GetDate(), SYSTEM_USER FROM INSERTED
    END 

    IF EXISTS (SELECT * FROM INSERTED) AND NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM DELETED)
    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO [EmployeeRev](EmployeeID,Firstname,Initial,Surname,Birthdate,operation, updated, updatedby) SELECT inserted.ID, inserted.Firstname,inserted.Initial,inserted.Surname,inserted.Birthdate,'i', GetDate(), SYSTEM_USER FROM INSERTED
    END

    IF EXISTS(SELECT * FROM DELETED) AND NOT EXISTS(SELECT * FROM INSERTED)
    BEGIN
        INSERT INTO [EmployeeRev](EmployeeID,Firstname,Initial,Surname,Birthdate,operation, updated, updatedby) SELECT deleted.ID, deleted.Firstname,deleted.Initial,deleted.Surname,deleted.Birthdate,'d', GetDate(), SYSTEM_USER FROM DELETED 
    END
END

I use SQLServer to generate the SQL for the revision tables instead of hand coding it. This code is available on https://github.com/newdigate/sqlserver-revision-tables